There's No Place Like Atlantis
by Sparkletwinkle
Summary: Pythagoras takes a tumble and ends in a world unknown and strange. Finally finishing a old fanfic I wrote many years ago then abandoned!


**Authors Note**

* * *

I apologise for the god awful formatting in this story. For some reason this one has been giving me no end of trouble. All my other stories were angels and published nicely with no trouble or wrestling with messed up formatting. Not this one. Anyway, this story is a game of two halves. One half I wrote way back in 2013, not long into the first series of Atlantis. For some reason or another I abandoned it, and only came across it last night. I was bored so decided to try and finish it off, so without further ado, here we go!

* * *

Pythagoras was normally a patient man. But his new house-mates were really trying it. Hercules had fallen asleep after a evening of heavy drinking at the tavern and was snoring loudly, and Jason was messing around with the swords and had already managed to knock a shelf of bottles over, to say nothing of the page of diagrams he was drawing. Eventually he had quite enough of the two of them, and decided to go out to get some (relative) peace in the city of Atlantis and read.

Pythagoras turned the corner to walk down the stairs, and was knocked flying by a villager chasing after a pet. He stumbled and in a split moment, went tumbling down the stairs head first. His heart felt like it was about to burst out of his mouth as he fell, coming to a rough landing at the bottom on a fruit cart heading for home.

* * *

When Pythagoras woke, his first thought was how peculiar the air smelt, like nothing he had ever smelt before. "A sort of strange sterile cleanness" he thought, as he opened his eyes. The first thing he saw exactly matched the scent and proved his point. Clean white walls and bright lighting and lots and lots of people on beds with people tending to them. It was most unlike what Pythagoras was used to. Where he came from, if you were hurt, you tried your best to clean your wounds and hope to not die.

A nurse came over to Pythagoras and enquired to how he was feeling. In truth, he felt absolutely awful, as you would if you fell head first down a flight of stairs and into a cart full of fruit. But he was so taken with this new strange environment, he almost forgot he was even injured, until he tried to move his arm and his head and a strong sense of dizziness and nausea overcame him.

Eventually Pythagoras felt well enough to leave the hospital, but not before a mishap with the modern plumbing. (Turns out, 20 wadded up paper towels and 2 rolls of toilet paper don't exactly flush particularly well, even for "some kind of unexplainable magic hygiene portal." While Pythagoras might have been amused to see the toilet double as a fountain, nobody else was. And he did have to admit, the end result wasn't particularly pleasant.)

Oh, and the incident with the phone and the rather peeved delivery man who arrived at the ward carrying a big bag of Chinese food at 1am in the morning. It would have been a perfectly fine scenario had Pythagoras known that A. You have to actually pay for your food with money not barter like he was used to doing and B. That delivery drivers didn't usually like travelling 20 miles at 1am in the morning to deliver food..

Needless to say, the nurses ate well that night as they watched the resulting showdown between a very angry delivery man indeed and poor Pythagoras who didn't understand these strange customs very well at all and thought the purpose of a food delivery man was to bring him food whenever he wanted- regardless of social conventions!

Eventually the nurses had to break their fight up as the other patients were getting irritated at the two men's antics and remove the man from the ward, still red-faced and angry. The nurses were very glad to send Pythagoras home indeed, and to be honest he was glad to leave. Rejecting their offer of a taxi, as he wasn't quite sure what it was and holding a copy of the bus timetable the puzzled nurses had offered him after, he stepped outside.

His first impressions were that the world was a strange, strange place. Brightly coloured machines that somehow moved along the ground in a bizzare to him fashion, people holding sticks that seemed to blow smoke and holding strange contraptions that they talked loudly into in a sort of gabbling fashion. It was almost too much, and Pythagoras panicked and started to hypoventilate."Nothing makes sense here at all!" he thought to himself in a panic, as he tried to find the buses the nurses had talked about. It was too busy and loud but not in the familar, reassuring fashion of Atlantis's daily hub-bub in the market. It seemed to him to be a entirely different, almost frightening sort of hub-bub.

Pythagoras spotted a sign with a strange looking symbol on it then looked around to find a line of people waiting patiently next to it. He guessed this must be the bus stop and walked over to join them. As he reached the bus stop nervously, his heart still beating faster then he thought must be healthy and half wondering if he should go back to the hospital and feign illness again, a red bus pulled up next to them, twice the height of the horse and carts Pythagoras was used to and five times as noisy and smelly. He swallowed as he moved forward, and prepared to board this strange red thing that he supposed was the bus.

As he boarded, he noticed by the driver was a yellow pad with a odd symbol on it. "Whatever could it be?" he wondered, as the grumbles from the people behind him started due to his slow speed of boarding. Pythagoras decided to just ignore it and move on, but a loud "OI! COME HERE!" from the driver stopped him in his tracks and sent chills down his spine. He slowly turned around, holding his breath and glimpsed a very angry looking bus driver glaring at him through the window as the other passengers looked on, some tutting to themselves and shaking their heads.

Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, Pythagoras asked what was wrong. This seemed to enrage the driver more, and he yelled "You have to pay you know! Where's your Oyster card?" Unfortunately for Pythagoras, an oyster to him was a type of shellfish and he wondered why on earth they made shellfish into a card, and why did you need it for the bus? He got his answer when the bus driver explained it to Pythagoras, and he had to admit he indeed did not have one of those oyster cards and make a quick exit off the bus, his face red as the bus itself.

Poor Pythagoras. The last 3 days had not gone well for him at all. He was mortified, confused and dazed, plus beginning to get a massive headache from the fumes of the bus that was now beginning to depart alongside him. As he wandered down the road, the world roaring about him and making him feel miserable, he felt tears roll down his cheeks. He missed Jason and his love of over eagerly demonstrating his new sword, taking down everything on the walls in the process, feeling a huge pang of his heart as he thought about it. He missed Hercules always bringing home a new lady, his love of alcohol and having to tip toe round his snoring body draped on a chair the morning after over consuming said alcohol.

As he thought of his friends and wondered what they would be doing back home his emotions gave way, and he found himself suddenly sobbing his heart out in pure pain and misery. Nothing about the last few days had been fun at all. He sobbed out loud that he just wanted to go home and stick to the triangles and theories he knew as passers by offered sympthathic words and tissues. He sat heavily down on a wall feeling light headed all of a sudden, as the world turned a strange blurry shape and words seemed to suddenly muffle around him. All of a sudden, he passed out.

* * *

Pythagoras opened his eyes and saw a dusty blue sky and felt the familiar heat on his skin and market traders call out to their friends and customers as the world passed by. He spotted the familiar shapes of his friends and tears came to his eyes as he gasped. "Are you alright?" asked Jason, worriedly. "I came as fast as I could. Hercules is right behind, he only just woke up. That's a nasty gash on your head, let's go get you cleaned up." At the sound of his best friend's voice, Pythagoras could have climbed a mountain, head injury or not. He followed Jason up the stairs back to his home and saw Hercules's worried expression as he walked in the door.

"He looks like he's been though the wars!" Hercules laughed, as he fetched a bowl of water and some cloth to get Pythagoras cleaned up. Jason didn't find that so funny, and remarked "Yes, well it's not a laughing matter. He could have concussion." He continued to fuss as he cleaned Pythagoras's wounds, and Pythagoras just closed his eyes and savoured hearing his friends's voice. Well, before two very worried people immedately took this to be a sign he was very injured, and indeed Pythagoras did have a nasty headache.

Soon Pythagoras was tucked in bed with Jason sitting alongside him watching him carefully for any signs of concussion. Pythagoras turned to him and smiled. He didn't need buses or shellfish cards or hospitals. This was all he needed. He called Jason over and sat up in bed. He thanked him for being such a good friend and gave him a kiss on the lips. Jason's response to this was to return the kiss and smile, gently brushing Pythagoras's face. "Goodnight" Jason said softly. "You should probably be alright, but don't go falling down any more stairs, okay?" Pythagoras laughed. "I won't." he smiled. "Goodnight." With that, Pythagoras blew out the candle beside his bed and turned over, smiling to himself as he drifted off to sleep.


End file.
